More articles from Viewpoint
- Contraception in the Era of COVID-19
As global health systems and communities prepare to meet an unprecedented threat causing increased demands for the care of people with COVID-19, health care providers should strive to ensure continuity of reproductive health care to women and girls in the face of facility service disruption.
- Multimonth Dispensing of Antiretroviral Therapy Protects the Most Vulnerable From 2 Pandemics at Once
We encourage governments in countries that have a high prevalence of people living with HIV to implement multimonth dispensing of antiretroviral therapy to safeguard both patients with HIV and health care workers from coronavirus disease COVID-19.
- Ebola: A Hyperinflated Emergency
As with the Ebola outbreak, global under-5 mortality and morbidity should be considered a public health emergency of international concern.
- Strengthening Social and Behavior Change in Postabortion Care: A Call to Action for Health Professionals
Social and behavior change approaches have shown promise for addressing the demand- and supply-side challenges in postabortion care. As implementers seek to improve the quality of postabortion care, systematically integrating long-standing models and emerging approaches, including behavioral economics, human-centered design, and attribute-based models of behavior change, can promote positive health outcomes.
- Where Do We Go From Here? Defining an Agenda for Home-Based Records Research and Action Considering the 2018 WHO Guidelines
Recent WHO guidelines point to knowledge gaps about home-based records despite their widespread use. Future research should explore their impact on health outcomes, challenges including production costs and confidentiality breaches, the role of design in their use, and the business case for investing in them.
- Regaining Momentum in Family Planning
Since the launch of the Family Planning 2020 initiative 5 years ago, 46 million more clients in the 69 poorest countries are using modern contraception—a tremendous accomplishment, albeit behind schedule to reach the 2020 global goal of 120 million. Family planning continues to be innovative, and as reflected in the recent 2018 International Conference on Family Planning in Rwanda, there is a newfound momentum behind the movement and a new generation of young leaders with powerful ideas, creativity, and passion who are stepping up to help propel family planning onward.
- Improving the Safety and Security of Those Engaged in Global Health Traveling Abroad
We need to improve the safety and security of global health students, faculty, residents, and workers who travel abroad, particularly those affiliated with smaller organizations or educational programs that lack resources and protocols. We offer a checklist covering 6 core elements: (1) institutional commitment, (2) trainee and faculty participation, (3) safety and security assessment and analysis, (4) risk and hazard prevention, (5) safety training, and (6) program evaluation.
- Moving Medicine, Moving Minds: Helping Developing Countries Overcome Barriers to Outsourcing Health Commodity Distribution to Boost Supply Chain Performance and Strengthen Health Systems
Senegal and other developing countries are improving access to health commodities by outsourcing supply chain logistics to private providers. To achieve broader, lasting reform, we must support further adoption of the outsourced model; assist country-led cost-benefit analyses; and help governments build capacity to manage contracts and overcome other barriers.
- The Levonorgestrel Intrauterine System: Reasons to Expand Access to the Public Sector of Africa
The levonorgestrel intrauterine system has: (1) excellent effectiveness, (2) high satisfaction levels, (3) non-contraceptive benefits, and (4) potential to help reinvigorate interest in intrauterine contraception. The time is ripe for ministries and donor agencies to work together to make the product widely available across Africa.
- The Levonorgestrel Intrauterine System: A Pragmatic View of an Excellent Contraceptive
The levonorgestrel intrauterine system (LNG IUS) has major advantages and could be a “game-changer” in improving contraceptive choice and use. It faces important challenges, however, including: (1) high commodity cost; (2) often-strong provider resistance to IUDs and difficult programmatic requirements; (3) need for demand creation, including assessing if markedly reduced menstrual bleeding is attractive to clients; and (4) the many requirements for introducing any new contraceptive. A good next step would be a well-focused and multifaceted “learning introduction” to assess the LNG IUS’s potential in several low-income countries, with rapid scale-up if results are promising.